'No Right to an Honest Living':

The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers During the Era of the Civil War

by Jacqueline Jones

Professor Emerita, Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women's History, and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History

The University of Texas at Austin

4:00pm Lecture | 5:00pm Reception

Antebellum Boston had a well-earned reputation as a center of radical abolitionism, with outspoken, militant Black and white activists. Yet the city’s Black workers, facing pervasive discrimination in the labor market, remained stuck on the lowest rungs of the job ladder, condemned to irregular, ill-paid work, or to no work at all. For their own reasons, potential white allies—including abolitionists, city officials, Republicans, and labor reformers-- failed to advocate for these workers. Nevertheless, Black women and men showed remarkable resourcefulness in providing for their families and sustaining a vibrant community life. The story of nineteenth-century Boston is the story of the United States writ small—a place where the injustices of everyday life were at odds with a rhetorical commitment to fairness and equality.

Tracy W. McGregor was initially attracted to book collecting through his love of English literature, though American history eventually took precedence. In the decade before his death in 1936, McGregor formed an outstanding collection of over 5,000 rare works of Americana and 1,000 rare volumes of English literature, which he intended to donate to a deserving southern university. In 1938 the McGregor Fund selected the UVA Library as the collection’s permanent home. Since then, in addition to endowing the McGregor Lecture, the McGregor Fund has established an endowment for the Tracy W. McGregor Library, which has more than quadrupled in size; provided funding to transform the McGregor Room into the UVA community’s favorite reading room; and most recently supported the digitization of over 500 of the McGregor Library’s most significant books.

'No Right to an Honest Living':

T﻿he Struggles of Boston's Black Workers During the Era of the Civil War

by Jacqueline Jones

4﻿:00pm Lecture | 5:00pm Reception

The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers During the Era of the Civil War

4:00pm Lecture | 5:00pm Reception

The Tracy W. and Katherine W. McGregor Lecture with Jacqueline Jones